"On January 6th 2013, at the LSA meeting in Boston, the Society of Pidgin and Creole Linguistics bestowed on Sally Thomason its most distinguished award, the Lifetime Achievement Award. It recognizes the work of linguists who have made exceptional contributions to the field of contact linguistics. The contributions that Sally has made to the field of contact linguistics include a clear articulation of principles of contact-induced language change, as well as contact language genesis, including pidgins, creoles, and bilingual mixed languages. The award ceremony was well attended and included not only members of the Society of Pidgin and Creole Linguistics but also from the Linguistic Society of America and was the highlight of the SPCL conference."

This is the second major award that Sally has received for her contributions to the field of Linguistics over the past few months. As we reported here, Sally was also recently honored by her alma mater, Yale, with the Wilbur Cross Medal. We are honored to have such as esteemed linguist as a member of our faculty, and as our department chair.